How Game Developers can Choose Winning IP
This is adapted from a talk at GMIC for a Chinese audience, and covered by sootoo.com
With the news that Disney is heading towards a licensing strategy, it will be a high likelihood as a game developer, you will be working with a licensed IP.
It is truly a partnership. This means you will bring value to the IP and the IP will bring value to your game. It is clear what the IP should be bringing: continued content, lower marketing spend, and mass appeal. But for the game developer what does it bring? Deeper engagement with the IP, retention for the IP between movie or product launches, and of course a continuous revenue stream for the IP holder.
Therefore, choose your partner wisely and consider the following below.
Deep and Continuing IP
The Marvel Universe Image Credit: Marvel
Kabam is great at deep gameplay married with great IP. We look for IP that has lots of characters and deep storyline. Our games enjoy many characters and rich storyline. This is why we have partnered with Marvel: lot’s of characters, rich storylines and continuing IP (many movies coming out). In Lfact the Marvel universe keeps expanding, which presents so many possibilities for the game developer.
Concept Art: Guillotine
Comic Book Art: Guillotine
Marvel Contest of Champions: Guillotine
In October 2015, when Marvel wanted to expand their Marvel universe with a new superhero character, they came to the game developers as a source of a new character, and they developed Guillotine.
However, if your speciality is something else, perhaps a single player gam3, it is best that you find an IP with a singular character that is deep and rich which will continue. For example, Glu Games had a great simulation engine that revolved around a singular experience. For them, the brand of Kim Kardashian made sense, and helped catapult their game to new audiences. Also it is clear from all the magazine publications that the Kim K. IP continues regardless whether some like it or not.
The most important qualifier in choosing IP is that there is continued life to the IP.
Global IP
Homer Simpson — Noooo! Note: The Simpsons are not a popular franchise in Asia. Image Credit: Screenrant.com
If possible, consider IP that is globally appealing. The western markets only account for about 500 million people to which a large percentage of people have smart devices which they play games. Therefore, choosing an IP that does not have global appeal immediately limits your ability to grow past the Western markets. And , in the next few years the mobile gaming market is projected to mainly grow in Asia (Gamasutra). Yes, when possible think globally.
Right Genre + Right Team + Right IP
It is important to marry the right genre with the right IP. Early on we only had one game called Kingdoms of Camelot, which was strategy based. When considering an IP, each time we would ask if it would make sense with the genres and gameplay we were good at. For example, would Star Wars be coupled well with a strategy based genre? It didn’t seem to make so much sense to us easily. Unlike once we had a team and a successful action game engine, we were able to explore IP that fit this genre.
Also we would go a step further and evaluate the team behind the game development team to create this IP and ask the following questions.
Did they have expertise in this genre?
Had the core team been working together for a long time?
Had they worked with complications around licensed IP before?
We found that game development on the mobile phone has become increasingly mature, meaning the experts in the industry have a much better than fighting chance than amateurs. Gaming is one of the few industry within entertainment that favor experience over youth. Therefore since it is a team that creates a game and rarely a single person, looking at the core of the team and their ability to stand the test of time can really give the game an advantage at succeeding. Finally working with IP that is tied to outside product launches such as movies requires complications that come with many partners. Any team that has had success and is still together is a team that should be bet upon when dealing with IP.
Game development is becoming increasingly difficult and rules out those that are just opportunistic, but can really favor those who are determined, full of passion and just a bit lucky.
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I am the co-founder and Chief Development Officer of Kabam. I am currently in Beijing, China. These perspectives are my own and do not necessarily represent Kabam.
Unless otherwise noted, all image credit is Kabam